
CLAIM: A newly released document shows porn actor Stormy Daniels admitting she never had an affair with former President Donald Trump.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: Missing context. The signed statement with the denial was publicly released on Jan. 30, 2018. Not long after, Daniels recanted the statement and said that an affair had occurred. She said her denials were due to a non-disclosure agreement and that she signed the statement because parties involved “made it sound like I had no choice.”
When asked what he thought about Israel, in The New Yorker, Soros replied: "I don't deny Jews the right to a national existence – but I don't want to be a part of it".[159] According to hacked emails released in 2016, Soros's Open Society Foundation has a self-described objective of "challenging Israel's racist and anti-democratic policies" in international forums, in part by questioning Israel's reputation as a democracy.[160] He has funded NGOs which have been actively critical of Israeli policies[161][162][163] including groups that campaign for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.[161]
Speaking before a 2003 conference of the Jewish Funders Network, Soros said that the administrations of George W. Bush in the U.S. and Ariel Sharon in Israel, and even the unintended consequences of some of his own actions, were partially contributing to a new European antisemitism. Soros, citing accusations that he was one of the "Jewish financiers" who, in antisemitic terms, "ruled the world by proxy", suggested that, if the direction of those policies were changed, then anti-Semitism would diminish. Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League later said that Soros's comments held a simplistic view, were counterproductive, biased and a bigoted perception of the situation, and "blamed the victim" when holding Jews responsible for antisemitism. Jewish philanthropist Michael Steinhardt, who arranged for Soros's appearance at the conference, clarified that "George Soros does not think Jews should be hated any more than they deserve to be".[164] Soros has also said that Jews can overcome antisemitism by "giv[ing] up on the tribalness".[165]
In a subsequent article for The New York Review of Books, Soros emphasized that:
As of March 2020, Forbes magazine listed Soros as the 162nd richest person in the world, with a net worth of $8.3 billion.[211] He has also donated 64% of his original fortune, and distributed more than $15 billion through his Open Society Foundations (an international grantmaking network that supports advancing justice, education, public health and independent media). Forbes has called him the most generous giver (when measured as a percentage of net worth).[12]
Soros has been active as a philanthropist since the 1970s, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa,[105] and began funding dissident movements behind the Iron Curtain.[citation needed]
Soros's philanthropic funding includes efforts to promote non-violent democratization in the post-communist states. These efforts, mostly in Central and Eastern Europe, occur primarily through the Open Society Foundations (originally Open Society Institute or OSI) and national Soros Foundations, which sometimes go under other names (such as the Stefan Batory Foundation in Poland). As of 2003, PBS estimated that he had given away a total of $4 billion.[86] The OSI says it has spent about $500 million annually in recent years.
In 2003, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker wrote in the foreword of Soros's book The Alchemy of Finance:
Time magazine in 2007 cited two specific projects—$100 million toward Internet infrastructure for regional Russian universities, and $50 million for the Millennium Promise to eradicate extreme poverty in Africa—noting that Soros had given $742 million to projects in the U.S., and given away a total of more than $7 billion.[213]
Other notable projects have included aid to scientists and universities throughout central and eastern Europe, help to civilians during the siege of Sarajevo, and Transparency International. Soros also pledged an endowment of €420 million to the Central European University (CEU).
According to National Review Online[214] the Open Society Institute gave $20,000 in September 2002 to the Defense Committee of Lynne Stewart, the lawyer who has defended controversial, poor, and often unpopular defendants in court and was sentenced to 213 years in prison for "providing material support for a terrorist conspiracy" via a press conference for a client. An OSI spokeswoman said "it appeared to us at that time that there was a right-to-counsel issue worthy of our support", but claimed later requests for support were declined.[citation needed]
In September 2006, Soros pledged $50 million to the Millennium Promise, led by economist Jeffrey Sachs to provide educational, agricultural, and medical aid to help villages in Africa enduring poverty. The New York Times termed this endeavor a "departure" for Soros whose philanthropic focus had been on fostering democracy and good government, but Soros noted that most poverty resulted from bad governance.[215]
In May 2011, Soros donated $60 million to Bard College, establishing the Bard College Center for Civic Engagement.[216]
Soros played a role in the peaceful transition from communism to democracy in Hungary (1984–89)[24] and provided a substantial endowment to Central European University in Budapest.[217] The Open Society Foundations has active programs in more than 60 countries around the world with total expenditures currently averaging approximately $600 million a year.[3][218]
On October 17, 2017, it was announced that Soros had transferred $18 billion to the Open Society Foundations.[219] In October 2018, Soros donated $2 million to the Wikimedia Foundation via the Wikimedia Endowment program.[220]
In January 2020, Soros announced a $1 billion endowment donation at the World Economic Forum, establishing the Open Society University Network a global network of educational institutions in partnership with Bard College and the Central European University.[221] Bard College president Leon Botstein serves as chancellor of the Open Society University Network.[222]
In July 2020, Soros's Foundations announced plans to give $220 million in grants for racial justice groups, criminal justice reform and civic engagement.[223]
In July 2020, Soros donated $100 million to Bard College, to strengthen and expand Bard's Center for Civic Engagement initiatives, and its leadership role as a founding partner of the Open Society University Network.[224]
